


don't know what it's like

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cheating, F/M, Grant Ward Lives, Minor Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Post-Episode: s04e04 Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24548989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: James' words stick with Jemma.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	don't know what it's like

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from and this is inspired by Katelyn Tarver's song "you don't know" and also my eternal frustration with that scene in 4x04 where James and Daisy act like Jemma is some sheltered lamb who's never suffered loss just because she wasn't swayed.

The seal on the containment pod hisses as Jemma exits. Her common sense tells her not to look back but she finds herself unable to resist the compulsion.

J.T. James aka Hellfire is doing his damnedest to live up to the moniker despite the pod’s dampening of his powers. Even now that she’s gone, he follows her every move. Like a caged predator who knows attack is imminent and only waits for the opportunity for escape it will provide.

And yet, the chill that crawls up her spine isn’t due to his glare but the echo of his earlier words still rattling around her head.

_She doesn’t know…_

“-you thinking?” As Jemma leaves James and his anger behind, she enters into the ongoing conversation between Daisy and Coulson. It’s a bit surprising it’s not over yet, but Jemma supposes the debrief with May took up much of the time she’s been in with James.

She’ll need to have her own meeting with the Director—assuming, of course, that May is still the Director. Jemma’s given to understand she and Coulson agreed he would step down to search for Daisy as he was unable to focus on the larger demands of the position while she was MIA. Now that Daisy’s home there’s no telling who will lead SHIELD tomorrow.

“I wasn’t,” Daisy says curtly. “Obviously.”

Too late to back out, Jemma comes up short. Daisy sees her stuttering steps and shoots her a guilty glance, then petulantly looks to the floor. Jemma has the terribly unkind thought that her guilt, while necessary, is misplaced.

“We were worried about you,” Coulson says gently. “Ward is-”

“I _know_.” Daisy lifts her eyes and there are tears in them. “You think I don’t know how dangerous it is out there? That’s _why_ I had to leave. After Li-” She hiccups in a breath and every atom in Jemma’s body urges her to go to her. She allows the weight of her shoulder against the doorway to anchor her in place and remains where she is. “I’m the strongest out of all of us. And I couldn’t sit here and do things the way SHIELD needed them to be done when it meant letting you guys put yourselves at risk too. I needed to take care of the problem myself, _my_ way. I couldn’t lose anyone else.”

That Daisy has spent the past eight months chasing Watchdogs, by far the least deadly of SHIELD’s adversaries, while their greater threats have been, so far as Jemma can see, completely off her radar, Coulson doesn’t point out. His face falls in that sympathetic way that makes him an ideal agent when it comes to dealing with emotional Gifteds.

“Oh, Daisy,” he says. “You know that isn’t how this works.” Daisy opens her mouth and Coulson continues over her. “It goes both ways. You don’t get to protect us without letting us do the same. That’s the price of loving people. You’re just gonna have to pay it.”

Though Jemma spent much of the morning making a similar point, albeit in different words, Daisy appears unprepared for this line of reasoning. Her tears finally begin to fall and she likewise tips forward into Coulson’s waiting arms.

After that there’s nothing to keep her here, but Jemma allows herself a moment to observe the scene and settle into the aching jealousy it evokes within her.

_She doesn’t know what it’s like…_

She shakes her head, cutting off the memory and the emotion alike, and extracts herself from the doorway. Coulson smiles at her over Daisy’s head as she passes and Jemma returns it with the warmest smile she can muster under the circumstances. If he notices her hesitance, no doubt he attributes it to the long day she’s had.

Her debrief with May is short. The others already reported the whole story or enough of it that May doesn’t _want_ to hear more. The official story has yet to be decided but, as Daisy appears to be staying, Jemma doubts it will include their spur of the moment lie that she was coerced into helping a rogue agent.

In the time she’s in the Director’s office, Jemma misses a call from Fitz. This late it isn’t difficult to find a secluded corridor in which to listen to the message he left.

“Hi, it’s me. Sorry I missed you. I know you wanted to tell me about the apartment. I’ll be spending the night at Radcliffe’s—I don’t want to jinx it but I think we might be on the verge of something big. I’ll tell you about it later. Maybe lunch? Tomorrow? You can tell me about the apartment. —Augh. I’d better go. Love you!”

There’s too much there to unpack, too much of that ache still wrapped around her heart from earlier. She dials rather than examine any of it and is answered, as she knows she will be while Fitz is on the verge of discovery, by his voice mail.

“Hi! I was in a debrief with May. I don’t think lunch will do, you’ll be much better off getting some rest after whatever it is you’re up to tonight-” She thinks of telling him to be quick; he’ll want to see Daisy now she’s back. But if he listens to this tonight, he’ll come back straight away. She doesn’t want him to. “-and the apartment’s a no. The floor is stained.” With Daisy’s blood, she doesn’t say. Not that it will matter much to him. He never wanted the apartment at all.

Perhaps if she’d told him the truth, that it was meant to put the past behind them, truly start their lives together on the blank canvas of a neutral space. But then she might have gone further and confessed that she wanted to take this sizable step as a tangible sign to herself that she was going to change her ways.

_She doesn’t know what it’s like to change…_

“Anyway, I’ll see you when I see you, I suppose. Say hello to Radcliffe for me.”

She hangs up quickly so that the words left unsaid won’t be noticed in the silence. Then, before she can think better of it, she types a text. _Tonight._ One word and she hesitates over whether to add a question mark before deciding to leave it off entirely. She doesn’t want to appear uncertain.

She’s just dragged her overnight bag from the corner of the closet she abandoned it to three months ago when her phone dings with a response. A word and a number. _Harvest 137._ She feels herself smile. Of the four pre-arranged options, Harvest was always her favorite. She shouldn’t read too much into the choice, it’s not as though he would know.

But the ache is less than it was as she stuffs toiletries and clothes into the bag.

The few agents she sees on her way out of the base don’t know her well enough to ask where she’s going. Perhaps they think she’s off on a mission. Perhaps they know enough of her and Fitz to think she’s off to meet him.

Either possibility threatens to banish her good mood so she doesn’t dwell on them.

She abandons the SHIELD issue car a mile away from her destination and leaves her phone inside, tucked between the seat and center console as though it simply fell from her pocket. It’s late enough by now even the nightowls are going to sleep and she receives an offer from a drunk being pulled home by his friends, but no other trouble.

The motel is cheap and rundown, the kind that looked like a last resort even when it was new. But there’s a parking lot out back belonging to a mall that was torn down long ago and never replaced, allowing for a clear view of the sunrise from the east-facing rooms.

Room 137 is on the eastern side.

She knocks and waits. For him to take up his sidearm, check the window, check the peephole, remove the door brace he’ll have brought along as an added security measure, unlock the door.

He opens it with a smile that warms her, allowing her room to pass him by. She drops her bag at the foot of the bed and turns, catching him just as he’s secured the door. He smiles into her kiss when his back hits the wall and pulls her against him. All it takes is that one kiss, one touch, and the weight of the day evaporates. The ache in her chest is gone as if it never were. Her coat falls away. Her head falls back as he digs his hands into her hair. She expects him to do as he so likes to do and kiss his way down her neck, but he only holds her there.

She opens her eyes and finds him watching her with a calculating stare.

“Why now?” he asks.

The question isn’t unexpected or unwarranted. It’s been three months since the last time they met like this. Not the first time she said it would be the last but the first time it was true.

Almost.

Until now.

She doesn’t feel as guilty for that as she should.

She uses the fingers already hooked in his belt loops to pull him closer. He comes readily because he always does. He supported her when the others were too wrapped up in the danger Hive posed and in the grief losing Daisy to his sway to remember her own, older grief. The monster they were fighting was wearing her lover’s face and no one even seemed to think that it might affect her.

No one but Ward. He had joined them to fight Hive—to take advantage of the old adage about enemies of enemies and to be there to sweep up Hydra’s remains for his own use when the dust settled—and somehow saw what everyone else was too busy to see. Just that was enough, just his presence and his shoulder to cry on that last day when Hive attacked the Playground and she finally had to face everything she’d lost.

_She doesn’t know what it’s like to change—to lose everything._

James was wrong. She knows _exactly_ what that’s like. She won’t do it again.

She doesn’t know how Ward’s offered comfort morphed into this. She only knows that, right or wrong, this is what she wants. 

“I had a rather stark reminder today that losing people is a part of life,” she says. “And if I have any say in who I’m to lose, I don’t want it to be you.”

A year ago, she would have died before admitting as much to him. She would have died before _feeling_ so much for him. But now she only hopes he might feel similarly.

Grant smiles slowly and pulls her in for a brief, chaste kiss. “That’s a damn good reason.”


End file.
